Perceptions of Portuguese undergraduate students about assessment: a study in five public universities

This paper draws upon a broader piece of research on assessment in higher education, particularly focusing on issues regarding the fairness and effectiveness of the assessment methods and their implications for the learning process. The perceptions of undergraduate students are analysed taking into account the effectiveness and fairness of both traditional and learner-centred assessment methods, as well their influence on the learning process. In total, 624 students participated in this study in five Portuguese Public Universities in different areas of knowledge and programmes. Data were collected through questionnaires. Findings suggest that assessment is seen as more effective and fairer when it is done through the use of learner-centred assessment methods rather than by traditional assessment (e.g. written tests or exams). The students also claim that they devote more time to study when assessment is performed through learner-centred assessment methods than by traditional ones. The most used assessment methods are written tests and oral presentations in group. However, differences in the programmes were identified as well as differences according to gender. Implications of the findings for assessment and for the teaching and learning process are discussed.     

Initial Characterization of Colombian High School Physics Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge on Electric Fields

We explore the initial characterization of the pedagogical content knowledge of four, in-service, Colombian pre-university secondary education physics teachers on the concept of electric field. Two of them teach the content in English as a second language. The aim of the study was to obtain an image of the participants’ teaching of electric field and the inherent complexities that go with that. The results revealed that factors which involved their personal educational models, such as, how they interpret their school’s curriculum, the relationship they see between physics and mathematics, the most effective strategies for teaching physics, and the time they have available to develop the topic played a significant role. The teachers considered it essential to establish new strategies that would motivate the pupils by helping them visualize the electric field.     

Teacher-child relationships and the development of academic and behavioral skills during elementary school: a within- and between-child analysis

Despite recent growth in research highlighting the potential of teacher-child relationships to promote children's development during the early years of school, questions remain about the importance of these relationships across elementary school. Using data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care (N = 1,364), this study examines between- and within-child associations between teacher-child relationship quality and children's academic achievement and behavior problems from kindergarten (ages 4-6 years) through 5th grade (ages 9-11 years). Results suggest that increases in teacher-child relationship quality are associated with improvements in teacher-reported academic skills and reductions in behavior problems consistently throughout elementary school. As children progressed from kindergarten through fifth grade, the importance of teacher-child relationship quality is unchanging.     

Invest for the Long Term or Attend to Immediate Needs? Schools and the Employment of Less Educated Youths and Adults

For the past 20 years, researchers worldwide have shared a consensus that tracking leads to failure in school. But educational systems continue to use this practice for many reasons. One argument used to support the practice is that students who enter the vocational track early in their careers tend to enter the labour market more quickly. Data show, however, that when these people are in their 40s, they become the most vulnerable to poverty, especially during periods of economic recession. In addition to moving towards more comprehensive educational systems as the best long-term way to improve the chances of all future adults, our research demonstrates that schools can play a key role in preventing and reversing the risk of unemployment and poverty of low educated youth. The INCLUD-ED project has analysed effective actions in eight European countries (Slovenia, United Kingdom, Italy, Austria, Romania, Belgium, Finland, and Spain) that respond to the educational needs of those who have experienced tracking. These effective alternatives are vocational programmes that include an academic-type of curriculum and allow students to move to higher education, as well as adult education programmes in schools which meet families' training needs, improving their opportunities in the labour market.     

PUKHA: a new pedagogical experience

Society needs responsible leaders and entrepreneurs. CDIO (conceive, design, implement and operate) is a framework for engineering education based on outcomes, more than on contents, that has been adopted by a growing number of engineering educational institutions for producing the next generation of engineering leaders. In order to support engineering students to become entrepreneurs and to bear other concerns than merely technical on today's rapid changing world, the authors believe the CDIO syllabus needs to be improved, and therefore propose a pre requisite to a useful CDIO perspective: IdEF, standing for Identify, Evaluate and Formulate real problems and needs. Based on this concept, this paper describes a new pedagogical project framework (PUKHA - to project, to undertake, to know how to achieve). Within PUKHA projects, more than 300 students have trained and checked their will, risk, responsibility, communication, leadership and entrepreneurship over the last three years.     

Multicultural education, pragmatism, and the goals of science teaching

In this paper, we offer an intermediate position in the multiculturalism/universalism debate, drawing upon Cobern and Loving’s epistemological pluralism, pragmatist philosophies, Southerland’s defense of instructional multicultural science education, and the conceptual profile model. An important element in this position is the proposal that understanding is the proper goal of science education. Our commitment to this proposal is explained in terms of a defense of an ethics of coexistence for dealing with cultural differences, according to which social argumentative processes—including those in science education—should be marked by dialogue and confrontation of arguments in the search of possible solutions, and an effort to (co-)live with differences if a negotiated solution is not reached. To understand the discourses at stake is, in our view, a key requirement for the coexistence of arguments and discourses, and the science classroom is the privileged space for promoting an understanding of the scientific discourse in particular. We argue for “inclusion” of students’ culturally grounded ideas in science education, but in a sense that avoids curricular multicultural science education, and, thus, any attempt to broaden the definition of “science” so that ideas from other ways of knowing might be simply treated as science contents. Science teachers should always take in due account the diversity of students’ worldviews, giving them room in argumentative processes in science classrooms, but should never lose from sight the necessity of stimulating students to understand scientific ideas. This view is grounded on a distinction between the goals of science education and the nature of science instruction, and demands a discussion about how learning is to take place in culturally sensitive science education, and about communicative approaches that might be more productive in science classrooms organized as we propose here. We employ the conceptual profile model to address both issues. We expect this paper can contribute to the elaboration of an instructional multicultural science education approach that eliminates the forced choice between the goals of promoting students’ understanding of scientific ideas and of empowering students through education.

The Project ‘Art for Learning Art’ in Contemporary Art Museums

Projection‐based augmented reality and virtual reality are used in a visual arts‐based educational project in contemporary art museums from an a/r/tographic perspective. The project ‘Art for Learning Art’ (in Spanish, Arte para aprender arte), at the Museo CajaGRANADA in Granada (Spain) has been developed in collaboration with the University of Granada since 2013. We have employed creative, educational and research methodologies inspired by exhibited works in art museums to encourage visual feedback of visitors participating in collaborative installations. Two such experiences also were produced at the Tate Liverpool Gallery and Museum in March 2018; utilising the methodology of mediation through projection‐based augmented reality and virtual reality, which introduces facets of visual and physical experience that alter the whole experience for the museum's public. By putting on virtual reality headsets, and playing with physical movements, we generate images and change the projections in the museum using projection‐based augmented reality to disrupt the way the public typically moves in the museum. The purpose of the developed interrelations with artworks in the Museo CajaGRANADA and the Tate Liverpool Gallery and Museum was to create collaborative digital images by playing with select artworks exhibited in the museums’ collections. We use this kind of mediation in art museums to develop a visual understanding to provoke learning about art through art creation in a contemporary way. The results are extraordinary as images; they are collaborative artworks, which connect visually with the artworks in the exhibition.     

Social Robotics and Societies of Robots

The sustainability of social robotics, like other ambitious research programs, depends on the identification of lines of inquiry that are coherent with its visionary goals while satisfying more stringent constraints of feasibility and near-term payoffs. Within these constraints, this article outlines one line of inquiry that seems especially viable: development of a society of robots operating within the physical environments of everyday human life, developing rich robot–robot social exchanges, and yet, refraining from any physical contact with human beings. To pursue this line of inquiry effectively, sustained interactions between specialized research communities in robotics are needed. Notably, suitable robotic hand design and control principles must be adopted to achieve proper robotic manipulation of objects designed for human hands that one finds in human habitats. The Pisa-IIT SoftHand project promises to meet these manipulation needs by a principled combination of sensorimotor synergies and soft robotics actuation, which aims at capturing how the biomechanical structure and neural control strategies of the human hand interact so as to simplify and solve both control and sensing problems.     

Leptotrichia hongkongensis sp. nov., a novel Leptotrichia species with the oral cavity as its natural reservoir

A straight, non-sporulating, Gram-variable bacillus (HKU24T) was recovered from the blood culture of a patient with metastatic breast carcinoma. After repeated subculturing in BACTEC Plus Anaerobic/F blood culture broth, HKU24T grew on brucella agar as non-hemolytic, pinpoint colonies after 96 h of incubation at 37 °C in an anaerobic environment and aerobic environment with 5% CO2. Growth was enhanced with a streak of Staphylococcus aureus. HKU24T was non-motile and catalase-negative, but positive for alkaline phosphatase, β-glucosidase, and α-glucosidase. It hydrolyzed phenylphosphonate and reduced resazurin. 16S rRNA, groEL, gyrB, recA, and rpoB sequencing showed that HKU24T occupies a distinct phylogenetic position among the Leptotrichia species, being most closely related to Leptotrichia trevisanii. Using HKU24T groEL, gyrB, recA, and rpoB gene-specific primers, fragments of these genes were amplified from one of 20 oral specimens. Based on phenotypic and genotypic characteristics, we propose a new species, Leptotrichia hongkongensis sp. nov., to describe this bacterium.